The subject of the present invention is a magazine for the maturation of cakes of synthetic foam material.
In the manufacture of synthetic foam materials, the material is made to expand in a continuous manner on a moving belt conveyor, so as to form a manufactured article having a constant, usually at least approximately rectangular section, which is cut into predetermined lengths, normally measuring several meters. At the output end of the plant, the blocks thus produced, known as cakes, have reached a consistency which allows them to be handled, but are not yet at their final consistency, nor are the exothermal chemical reactions induced in their interior exhausted, whereby the cakes must be stored and allowed to mature for a certain period of time amounting to several hours before they can finally be used. It is always very desirable, and in certain cases essential, that these cakes should not be superposed on each other during this storage step. This is because, in the case of superposition, the weight of the cakes lying above could deform the cakes lying below, which have not yet reached their full mechanical strength, and also because the direct superposition of the cakes would reduce the total surface exposed to direct contact with the atmosphere and hence the heat exchange, so that the exothermal chemical reactions still going on inside the cakes would give rise to their overheating. Overheating would lead to deterioration of the quality of the material, especially to yellowing thereof, while in extreme cases a spontaneous combustion could occur.
The most simple way to store the manufactured cakes without placing them the one on top of each other is to pick up each freshly cut cake by means of an overhead crane with a gripper, to raise it, to shift the same laterally and to deposit it, on the side of the other cakes previously produced, on a maturation surface from which the cakes will be taken away by means of the same process at the end of the maturation period. The drawback with this way of proceeding is an insufficient exploitation of the warehouse space, which must have a very large area since use is only made of the equivalent of the height of a cake.
In order to exploit the height of a magazine as well, maturation plants have been devised which comprise a magazine with many cells arranged in a meshwork on several levels, each cell being provided with a moving belt and having a size corresponding to that of a cake. At the output end of the expansion plant, the cake being formed is received on a belt conveyor mounted on a carrier which can move transversely and in elevation and, when the cake reaches the predetermined length and it has been cut, the carrier is shifted laterally and in elevation to bring the cake in front of an empty magazine cell, whereupon the cake is made to slide from the conveyor belt of the carrier to that of the cell. While this operation is taking place, a second carrier with a conveyor belt is positioned at the output end of the expansion plant in order to receive the new cake being formed. Even with this type of maturation plant, however, the magazine space is not completely exploited, because all the space needed to manoeuvre the carriers, which are shiftable laterally and in elevation and whose length is equal to that of the cakes, must be left free. In addition, it is considerably costly to have a pair of carriers shiftable laterally and in elevation.
In order to reduce the cost of the plant, it has been proposed to replace the pair of carriers with a distributing arm fitted with a conveyor belt, articulated to the output end of the expansion plant and suitable for being oriented so as to bring its movable end in front of the magazine cells. The operation of such a plant is rendered possible by the fact that the cakes of expanded material can be deformed to a certain extent; of course, during this operation, the cakes are curved both during their passage from the output end of the expansion plant to the distributing arm and during their passage from the distributing arm to the maturation cell. However, the limited deformability of the cakes imposes certain limits to the orientability allowed for the distributing arm, and hence does not allow the use of a large number of cells. In this plant, too, the space required for the orientation of the distributing arm must be left free and cannot be utilizied.